Friday, 27 October 2000

WEEKEND PREVIEW

Well, the biggest news this weekend is that the other shoe dropped at Sony BEFORE Charlie's Angels arrived… ironic, given that after months of pointing to this release as the Sword of Damocles over the Calley/Pascal regime's head, I now believe that the Angels will actually turn a small profit for Sony when all is said and done. More on this story as it shakes out in the weekend's News by the Numbers.

The second biggest story so far is Warner Bros. picking up The Dish and slotting it for first quarter 2001. More on that below.

At the theaters this weekend, you have two dogs, a kids' film, and a film about a kid who is as scrappy as a dog.

The first dog is Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. This one may have a big box-office bite this weekend, but in a month in which I've gone almost a month without a good movie, this one stands out. It's the kind of out and out mess that had me shaking my head in disbelief, time after time. I am a fan of Joe Berlinger's work as a Documentarian and, oddly enough, despite all that is wrong with this Part 2 turd of a movie, he shows no promise of being able to make a feature narrative behind the camera. But Mr. Berlinger, who as a Documentarian is used to serving only one master—the story—here serves way, way, way too many masters.

Book of Shadows has virtually NOTHING to do with the original film. And so, we spend many of our 87 minutes in the dark watching Artisan & Co. trying desperately to find some kind of connection between the world's most successful improvised movie (next time, Chris Guest, you need to kill some people) and what is primarily an all-interior spook-house horror cheapie. Hmmm… they go to a location from the original movie and wake up covered in blood… ooohhhh, ahhhhh. But they don't end up retracing the original group's steps, with new creepy things happening. They go to a warehouse with cool lighting for the rest of the picture and watch exteriors on video, including NUDITY! (Of course, this is signaled by a cast member saying, "You know what was missing in the first one… sex!") They hired a crew of all unknown actors again… but in what is essentially a traditional narrative film, the value of "not knowing" is gone. I'm not saying that it wouldn't be odd to have stars in the movie… unless they were playing "themselves," which might have been a good way of reinvigorating the illusion that the audience was having an intimate experience. Can you imagine a bunch of WB types, calling each other by their real names, carrying on, obsessed by the original movie, photographed by Joe Berlinger as though it were a documentary, making the audience wonder if the way they were relating was real? That might have actually worked. What we get is neither fish nor… well, check that… it is foul.

I haven't seen Lucky Numbers, but I haven't heard a single nice word about it from anyone… not even the quote whores. Sorry.

I hear decent things about The Little Vampire, but it is clearly a movie for kids. Hopefully, it is good enough for mom and dad too. Get that Lipnicki while you can, before he becomes the next Urkel.

And Billy Elliot is, indeed, a lovely movie. There's not real call for a lot of explanation of the story… you've seen it a million times before. But it hasn't been done this well recently and it's always good fun when it works. The plot: Boy turns in boxing gloves for toe shoes, works hard, finds his passion, makes it happen. It's the inverse comedy version of Girlfight. There's a double feature for you. You go in a straight, boring couple and by the time you come out, he's wearing her underwear and she's complaining about him and his friends going off to the bathroom in pairs. I must say, though, you get the feeling that if you tried to put Michelle Rodriguez and Jamie Bell on a P.R. "date," she'd strip him, mock his manhood, and have him crying as they walked up the red carpet. Not a fair fight.

But I digress…

I really do like Billy Elliot and encourage parents to take their kids, assuming that the f-word won't f**k the kids up too much. Is it a serious Oscar contender? I don't think so. But it is a lame year for Oscar, so who knows. It is surely one of the feel-good films of this year.

Get a look at the screen counts and box-office projections in Box Office Extra, up by 1 pm EST. every Friday.

THE GOOD: Between a very strong opening in Australia (not $3 million, which in my earlier reporting could be read as U.S. dollars, but about $3 million Australian, which is about $1.6 million U.S., still a near record for an Aussie domestic movie) and the start of the London screenings, Warner Bros. stepped up to the plate and picked up Rob Sitch's The Dish. Good start.

Hear my plea, WB… you announced that The Dish would be a first quarter 2001 movie… get an Oscar release and make this your movie for the year. I'm sure Proof of Life will be great… too much baggage for a major Oscar run. The Dish could not only be nominated for a load of Oscars, joining Erin Brockovich and Quills as the third major contender (so to speak), it could win. I love Erin, but she's already out on video and DVD. Generally, that's tough on an Oscar run. Quills may be the best, most important movie of the year… but it is a morality play and despite the itsy bitsy spider continuing to climb through all forms of restraint (see the movie to get the reference), it is heavy. The Dish is the kind of movie, like Shakespeare in Love, that Oscar voters can embrace and fall in love with. It may be set in Australia, but it is about an American experience that every member of the Academy, short of Haley Joel Osment, experienced first hand. And it is joyous fun. It is not an important film. It is not the most brilliantly directed film of the year. You can even understand the accents (unlike The Full Monty). But The Dish warms the heart and that is what draws Oscar's attention.

Don't let this opportunity pass you by.

PAGE TWO: A New Way To Count Quotes, Plus WAH! & An Ugly Junket